


the drive in

by lushology



Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, JJ POV, M/M, first person POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:47:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26647747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lushology/pseuds/lushology
Summary: The drive in.  of course.
Relationships: JJ/Pope (Outer Banks)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 15





	the drive in

The sky is clear. The stars shine bright. I can’t sleep again. 

I shuffle down to the kitchen, wearing Pope’s shirt and a pair of my pants. He’s standing there in the kitchen, elbows on the counter, his face in his hands.

“Are you okay,” I ask, startling him. He looks up at me.

“Is that my shirt,” he says instead of answering. This is the first time he’s ever said anything and I don’t know what to say. “It’s alright, I don’t mind.” A moment’s silence, then: “Can’t sleep?” I nod. “Me too.”

He heads out the front door and piles into the swing on the porch, leaving a spot next to him for me to fit myself into. He puts his head on my shoulder and stares out at the sky, all purple and grey and starry above the unkept fields. He’s like this sometimes, all soft and tired and spilling affection. He’ll shut his eyes but he’s still listening, still paying attention to whatever you’re going on about until you’re both asleep.

His hair smells like the beach and ink soaked paper and whiskey snowflakes. How can so many different things fit into one boy, one man?

“Do you want coffee,” I ask him. I feel him shake his head no into my neck.

Pope smells like the morning sky. Like red and yellows mixed together. Like stars as sharp as cigarette burns against white cushions. Sharp orange that leaves a bad taste in your mouth and pinks that bounce off lakes and right into your hands, longing for you, wanting you. Like early day dreams and hot breath against the cool air. Honey flooded eyes and bones wrapped in mud and tied together with wildflowers. Lips forever sewn together. Just enough love and then a little more.

“I love you,” I say.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“I can’t help it,” I say.

Pope says nothing. We are done now. I remove myself from his warmth and go back inside. I go up to my room. (I don’t sleep, I just sit against the pillows.)

* * *

The drive in. of course.

I don’t know what movie Pope’s chosen but it doesn’t matter. I’m wearing the blue hoodie and Pope’s wearing my hat (the grey one my mother knit for me one Christmas). It’s chilly for October and my cheeks are frozen, my lips stitched closed. I can only nod and shake my head.

I don’t like popcorn. It sticks to my mouth and makes me cough and everything I used to like about it is now drowned in butter. 

Pope knows this. He doesn’t get popcorn.

I don’t like orange soda. It’s too sugary and tastes like plastic and nothing like orange. It’s too bubbly and fizzes in my nose.

Pope knows this too. He gets root beer instead. 

We sit in the back of the truck that’s not ours, borrowed from the farm down the road, shoulders touching, knees knocking together. His leg is pressed to the side of mine. Everything around me feels so slow and suddenly, I am exhausted. He laces my fingers through his and I drop off to sleep on his shoulder.

Pope doesn’t say anything. He watches the movie. I nap through it all and I can’t help but hope he doesn’t mind.

He doesn’t mind. He wakes me when the movie is over. Drives me home. I wait for him on the porch swing while he returns the truck and walks back up the path, back to me.

I smile in a _sorry_ way when he comes back. He shakes his head. It’s fine. Pope holds my face in his hands. They’re cold and rough with callouses but I don’t mind. From this close, I can see the universe in his eyes.

He kisses me. It tastes like autumn and black and white movies. I tuck my hands in the crooks of his elbows to hold him closer.

Everything is so warm. 

He pulls me up into him so I am not sitting down, I am standing next to him. I don’t feel tired anymore.

Everything feels like lightning.

(Is it better to say nothing, to live with nothing or to shout it, let it spill out over your clothing and soaked you in words you didn’t know you could say?)

With his lips still on mine, Pope pulls me into the house and up the stairs, into his bedroom. I am seeing stars.

Some people eat up love and leave none for the rest. Some take too much and spit it out onto the floor.

Pope lies down next to me, tucks himself into me and closes his eyes.

This is just what I deserve, I think. 

We don’t sleep. Lovers don’t sleep.

He has a tattoo on his ankle. And a scar on his back. It presses into me, forms on his skin. I am him and he is me.

I want him to kiss everything.

There's magic here, in his bed, next to him. It’s all bright and fizzy and knows everything you don’t know. It comforts you, holds your hand and takes you home.

Love is about saving. Pope saved me once, twice, three times. Again and again and all I can offer is chapped lips on his and a hoodie that smells a little like me.

“I forgot to say it the other night. I love you. I can’t help it.”

He doesn’t kiss me on the cheek anymore. He kisses my lips, full and soft.

Apple pies bloom in the garden and blueberry canyons appear in the cracks. There is life, still. It is coming back. 

The house feels brighter. I feel brighter. I used to say nothing. Now, he is listening to me saying everything.

Everything starts and ends with Pope. He is all the light parts and the dark parts that make us whole. He is the shells at the bottom of the ocean and the crashing waves that shake the earth. He is lava and snowflakes. Everything and everything. He is one and one billion. I want to touch him a thousand times and once more.

**Author's Note:**

> follow my tumblr midsommars for more content!


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